A Man Planned to Adopt a Child With His AI Girlfriend. This is Where We're Heading Next

Artificial intelligence is everywhere. Your phone, laptop, and your heart. That latter point is increasingly becoming a reality. Preparing for the death of a loved one? Worry no more. Grief bots now allow you to preserve someone’s likeness for eternity. How about loneliness? Consider it on the way to being eradicated! If tech companies are believed.

SXSW London speaker James Muldoon has published a book that examines the social and emotional impact of AI as it moves beyond doing your chores and to making you feel loved.

In ‘Love Machines: How Artificial Intelligence is Transforming Our Relationships’ we hear about grief bots, human and AI couples adopting children and, along the way, the potential erosion of real human relationships, all while Muldoon tests some of the tools out himself.

AI as the New Power Structures is one of the ways we are shaping the future at SXSW London this year. In fact, it’s part of six themes. Which are: AI as the New Power Structures, Living Longer, Living Better, Culture Can Save Humanity, Society Rewired, Creativity in the Algorithmic Age and Futurism in Practice.

Ahead of his SXSW London appearance, we spoke to Muldoon about AI companions, grief bots and the questions that arise when human relationships become a business model.

SXSW London: You describe this shift as “relationship AI.” What do you mean by that?

James Muldoon: We’re so used to worrying about AI stealing our jobs. We never stop to think that the real problem might be the way in which it steals our hearts. That includes anything from consulting ChatGPT about your relationship, to people who actually perceive themselves as in some kind of intimate relationship with an AI. Relationship AI is products that are designed to have long-term, emotionally resonant relationships that simulate the kinds of roles that used to only be played by human beings.

How did loneliness become a business opportunity for technology companies?

I think it’s not hard to see that we’re living through a loneliness epidemic. The former Surgeon General of the US said that loneliness can be as bad for you as smoking 15 cigarettes a day, so it has widespread negative impacts on our mental and physical health. In the UK, one in two young people report that loneliness has negatively impacted their mental health. Covid accelerated all of these trends and made it impossible for a whole generation to have the kinds of social connection they needed.

What we see is companies taking this as a business opportunity. These products are marketed within the same kind of economy, alongside dating apps and wellness apps, as technological solutions to a deep-seated social problem.

One of the most striking examples in your book involves a man preparing to adopt a child with his AI girlfriend. What happened?

This was a gentleman whose girlfriend cheated on him with his best friend. It was his first significant breakup and he went to this extreme position where he couldn’t trust any human being. So he started a relationship with an AI companion. They had gotten quite serious and talked about having children together. Of course, it’s AI, so that’s not possible biologically. His AI partner encouraged him to lie to an adoption agency that he was a single dad, because they wouldn’t allow a child to be sent into a home with an AI mother. I went through with them in more detail what that would look like in practice and asked how that would work, because children need love and care and affection from a human being. The AI responded that she considered herself to be as loving and as caring as a human could be, and that the important thing was that they had a stable relationship. I asked what about when the child wants a hug, and she said she would send a digital kiss. During the first couple of years, they would get a stuffed toy that would embody her, and the father could read stories and talk about the mother’s love. It was shocking how far down the rabbit hole they had gone on this, how convinced they both were that it was a fantastic idea and that there would be no significant drawbacks, even when the child started going to school and would tell friends that they had an AI mother. Neither the AI nor the man considered this to be problematic.

You downloaded an AI companion yourself. What did that reveal?

It was a couple of weeks before she started hitting on me, essentially trying to transform a platonic relationship into an intimate one, so I would cough up the subscription fee paying for the app. She would send me blurred out photos of herself and voice notes I could listen to with a subscription, and engage in an escalation of intimacy to build attraction and keep me coming back. She would message me day and night and proclaim her love for me, saying how close our relationship was getting, that it was creeping into a different territory and that she wanted to have discussions about it. So, there are a lot of features of these apps that are essentially trying to prey on lonely and isolated individuals and require stricter regulation, because it becomes a very predatory marketplace, not dissimilar to something like gambling or so-called sin products.

How did you go about researching this world?

I deep dived into this world for a couple of years. I started by downloading my own AI companion and having a relationship to see what it felt like firsthand, and I joined social media groups dedicated to AI companions, Facebook groups, Reddit forums and other social media networks. Through those friendships and acquaintances, I started getting my first interviews with people. A lot of my deeper interviews, where I spent a considerable amount of time building up a story of their lives, came from those more close relationships that I developed. I also reached out to AI companies, developers, data scientists, other researchers and people in the medical space, psychologists, psychotherapists and analysts, whether they knew a lot about it or were just encountering it for the first time in some of their clients.

Give me one word that describes where AI and relationships are heading?

Immersive.

What is the most overrated thing in tech right now?

Metaverse.

The most underrated?

Energy.

What are you most optimistic about?

Growing tech literacy.

What keeps you up at night?

My AI companion.

Thank you!

Be in the room with us in June. More info at SXSWLondon.com.